For many years, the standard theory textbook in anthropology was Lowie’s 1938 History of Ethnological Theory. It covered everyone — Boas, Durkheim, everyone. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, the apostle of structure-functionalism, was one of the people he described. They had corresponded cordially in the past, but Lowie’s description of ‘R-B’ triggered the pretentious brit, and we wrote an eight page letter detailing  R-B’s charges against Lowie. The first sentence was: “The students of my seminar have asked me to explain how it is that you give such a distorted account of my views in your new book.” It’s all downhill after that — albeit in a very nitpicky, kinship-theory heavy way.

Lowie’s equally long response is a model of collegial, principled, methodical ruthlessness. You can read both letters on the History of Anthropology website. Radcliffe-Brown clearly wanted to have a Penis Size Contest in which each scholar carved our their own academic empire and then denounced each other as tyrants. You know, the way professors always do.

Lowie took the high road (sorta) by beginning his response insisting he didn’t hate R-B:

“Your letter of May 6th requires an extended reply, for it voices some regrettable misunderstandings. However, I must thank you for your candor, which I shall try to requite in kind. I hope you will disabuse “some persons” of the grotesque notion that my remarks are due to “personal spite or personal dislike.” Nothing in our past relations warrants this odd assumption. I have always recognized your work on social organization, and your appreciative note about my Crow book was all that I could wish. At least once I made efforts to lure you to our Summer School; and your willingness to take [W.Lloyd] Warner under your wing on my recommendation suggests some sense of common aims at the time. In short, I have no personal grievance whatsoever.

I have no disciples and want none. I am not a “leader” and I do not want my students to be led by the nose.

The letter ends with a series of humblebrags denigrating R-B’s egotism:

You have a gospel to proclaim; I make it clear to any students who seek inexpensive solutions for the riddles of the cultural universe that I do not hawk in such commodities. I do not conceive scientific work as an adolescent’s game for individual aggrandizement, but a cooperative effort that gives scope to many diverse talents and temperments. Neither in my book nor in this letter am I at all concerned about “scoring” against you: I am interested in separating dross from gold for a common exchequer. Having reread the pages devoted to you in my book, I suggest submitting them to some friendly layman remoted from the scene of anthropological feuds. Such a reader will not gather that you have “made an enemy” of me. Malice does not refer to its victim as doing some “exemplary” or “brilliant” work. The friendly layman will probably infer that you crave the servile adulation of henchmen, not the disciminating appreciation of peers, which to me is the only desirable form of recognition from fellow-workers.

The ironic thing about this letter is how the two of them have withstood the test of time. Radcliffe-Brown’s concisely, clearly written manifestos for structure-functionalism as still regularly assigned today, while Lowie’s longer works — in which he actually did what he said he would do — are pretty much forgotten. In my opinion, Lowie comes out on top in this correspondence, but in the long run his unwillingness to proclaim is gospel worked against him. On the other hand, Lowie trained a generation of students who went on to be instrumental in this discipline’s history, while R-B never had the influence that Malinowski did, institutionally speaking, in the UK. So perhaps although R-B is taught and remembered, Lowie’s legacy lives on, tacitly, in the discipline even as his work is less read.

And they all knew each other.

Consider Mauss’s correspondence with Radcliffe-Brown. Durkheimians both, their theoretical interests allied them against Malinowski. Mauss’s withering, gallic trashing of Malinowski may have more to do with placating Radcliffe-Brown than it does genuine animus. But it also reflects so much else that academia still has: A concern with funding, grudging respect for publication history, trash-talking about a rival’s advising style. It’s all there.

I know of Malinowski’s despotism. Rockefeller’s weakness with regard to him is probably the cause of his success. The weakness, due to the age and the elegance of the other English, those in London as well as those of Cambridge and Oxford, leave the field in England free for him; but you may be sure, even the young whom he protects know how to judge him. There are dynasties that do not last. His big work on magic and agriculture will surely be a very good exposition of the facts. This is what he excels at. And the subventions from Rockefeller for a whole army of stooges which he has had at his disposal will certainly have allowed him to have done something definitive. Only, alongside it there will be a very poor theory of the magical nature of this essential thing. At last he is going to write a great book on his functionalist theory of society and family organization. Here his theoretical weakness and his total lack of learning will make itself still more obvious.

This little glimpse into history is just one of the many open access publications on the history of our discipline that are out there. In addition to the newly-revived History of Anthropology Newsletter there are also the many excerpts and memorial over at the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford. Thanks to them for making this small, wonderful, slightly terribly little bit of historical kvetching accessible to all!

I first met both Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski in 1926 or 1927. It was the first occasion of their both being in New York at the same time. Pliny Earle Goddard was very anxious to have Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski meet Boas. He believed they would both discover that Boas was driving at the same thing they were driving at, that there really weren’t any fundamental conflicts. Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski were invited to what was a large living room in Ruth Bunzel’s parents’ apartment, somewhere near Riverside Drive. There were only about ten of us: six graduate students, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, and Boas.

When the time seemed right, Goddard invited Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown to say something. Radcliffe-Brown started off by giving extemporaneously a fifteen minute exposition of what he considered to be the meaning of meaning. It was, from a verbal standpoint a beautiful performance. Boas simply looked at Goddard, and looked at Radcliffe-Brown, and nodded his head. And that was all. Then Goddard turned to Malinowski and asked him if he wanted to say anything, and Malinowski gave an exposition of his concept of functionalism. After he got through with his fifteen minutes, Goddard turned to Boas, expecting him to say something… and then there was utter silence.

After the silence had gone on for as long as I could stand it, I asked a question. I was scare to death, of course. I asked Malinowski if he meant it when he said that every thing, every item in culture, had a vital function. He said, “Yes.” I said to him, “In the back of my hat here’s a little bow which is sewn on to where the seam comes. Now if you go to a store and try to buy a hat, you’ll find it has a little bow on it.” I asked him what its function was. The binding of the hat is sewn together at the back end very tightly; the bow doesn’t hold anything. If it isnt’ there, nothing will happen. And yet if you should happen to buy such a hat in a store, and it didn’t have the bow, the salesman would say, “wait a minute, I’ll have the bow put on.” But what function does it have? Well, Malinowski looked at me and said, “Well….” He thought first of course that maybe it held the hat together, and I showed him it didn’t. So then he said, “Well, maybe it’s decorative.” I said, “How? You can’t even see it.” We went on like this, for some time, but he finally said, “Oh, I’m interested in important matters.” He simply dropped it.

Now, where did I get this item? I happened to be indexing the first forty volumes of the Journal of American Folklore – that’s how I was earning my way through Columbia, for fifty cents an hour. If you start trying to index a thing like that believe me, as you go through a volume it becomes damned boring. So every once in a while, you say: “Oh, what the hell, at fifty cents an hour I’ll read a paper.”

There were several papers by a man named Garrick Mallery. He was an American ethnologist, and he was particularly interested in survivals. In regard to the hat bow, his explanation was that this was a survival of something which had once been more functional. At the back end of the hat ribbons were attached, and one wore the hat with ribbon streamers; style had gradually dictated that these become smaller and smaller, until they were finally stuck up inside the hat, and disappeared into the bow. So much for hats and Malinowski.